


don't call them that

by alchemystique



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2403119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, she thinks it’s probably pretty fitting that she’d get stuck with a bumbling nerd and a twelve-year-old as her companions for the end of the world.</p>
<p>Really, she should have expected it. Murphy’s Law and all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't call them that

**don’t call them that**

In the end, she thinks it’s probably pretty fitting that she’d get stuck with a bumbling nerd and a twelve-year-old as her companions for the end of the world.

Really, she should have expected it. Murphy’s Law and all.

And, okay, that’s rude. He’s not a nerd, per se, he’s just…

Well, survival isn’t necessarily his strong point. But she’ll give him this: he learns quickly. 

"Fuck!"

She rolls her eyes as he comes rolling down the hill after her, the katana already being tucked safely away while he shakes at his hair, now completely covered in gooey brain matter and very dead old blood. He doesn’t use that word often, but when he does he’s usually too busy bleeding all over her to notice it himself. He’s not bleeding now, though.

"Watch your mouth," she tells him, and he shoots her a glare so fierce she actually feels a little bit proud of him.

"Oh, I’m sorry, I’d forgotten about manners and decency in my momentary acknowledgement of the _horde_ of zombies we managed to attract. Forgive my lapse of judgment.”  
  
“Henry -,” she starts only to have the man scoff. 

"The lad survived the death of his entire family and two months on his lonesome, I believe he can handle a few curses."

He shouldn’t have to, is the thing, and Emma is still coming to terms with the fact that the poor kid is actually going to grow up in a world ten times worse than even her worst imaginings. 

"And don’t call them that."

In the last few months, she’s come to understand there is nothing Killian Jones likes more than an over-exaggerated eyeroll (Okay that and the eyebrow thing, but she’s not thinking about the eyebrow thing ever, ever again. Fuck. Now she’s thinking about it.) and he proves that once again, pupils rolling up behind hooded lids and - is he wearing eyeliner? Where the hell did he find eyeliner in the goddamn apocalypse?

"They’re zombies, love, plain and simple. Just because the world fell apart before Neil deGrasse Tyson could bite his bloody tongue and admit he was wrong doesn’t make them any less zombies."

"Stop."

"Zombies," he tells her, looking just as annoyed as she feels, and how the fuck did she end up with this?

She opens her mouth to respond only to watch him slide his blade free, aiming straight for her chest, and what the _hell_ -

She shoots him a grateful look as he skewers one of the - things - through the chest, his arm arcing down to slice off a leg.

The thing twitches from the ground, unimpeded by the gaping hole in it’s heart or the missing limb, and drags itself forward toward them, groaning and moaning all the while, and she watches Killian kick at it in annoyance. The groaning continues.

His eyebrow twitches up at her (Nope, she is not even remotely intrigued by his brow theatrics, it’s the end of the fucking world, she doesn’t have _time_ for this), his grin a little smug as he gestures at the creature. “Zombie,” he reiterates before he stabs the thing clean through the eye and it goes limp and still. 

"I’m not calling them that," she tells him, and his grin widens into bright white teeth. 

"Of course not. T’would offend your no doubt delicate sensibilities, princess."

"Fuck _off_.”

He whistles as they stride off into the forest together, eyes glittering with mirth. “I’m telling Henry,” he singsongs, and despite herself, she has to bite back a smile as she shakes her head at him.

———

It happens like this. Emma is down in the bowels of some corporate building, interviewing some IT lackey about the whereabouts of his roommate the bail jumper, when the bombs drop. The situation above ground had deteriorated in the span of the hour it took to actually find the IT department, and the government, having seen enough apocalypse scenarios to give them jitters, didn’t waste time trying to end the whole ordeal quickly.

Of course it didn’t work, and bombing a whole city only allowed the virus to spread more quickly, but she’s not a scientist, so she doesn’t really understand any of it. All she knows is when she dug herself out of the rubble, trapped in the sub basement of a sixty story building, her interrogation partner had rebar through his skull and she was staring at the lone survivor as he dug through debris.

"What," she’d said, more statement than question, and blue eyes flashed at her in the dim, flashing emergency lights. 

That was of course when he’d found what he’d been looking for - the katana she’d later learned a coworker of his had spent six hundred dollars on (“The man liked his leading ladies and his Walking Dead and little else. He’d be sorely disappointed to know I got his leading lady and his sword for the apocalypse.”)

He barely knew how to use the thing, scrawny arms and IT support posture and all, but no matter where she’d gone or what she’d done he’d followed after her like a lost puppy. (“I am not your leading lady. This is not some really depraved romcom where you get the girl and the world goes right again.” “You’ve obviously never watched Shaun of the Dead. This is exactly that.”)

Two months later they’d been raiding what they’d thought was an abandoned warehouse, digging through boxes of depleted ammunition and hoping against hope there was some sort of food they could scavenge, when she’d realized they were being watched.

She’d drawn her gun before she could take another breath, and the boy had tumbled down from the highest stack of shelves in surprise, landing at her feet with a groan. Far from the usual loner they’d run into over the past few months (and ditched the moment they could) the boy was sturdy and well fed, a glint to his eye that told her he’d seen plenty of loss and still managed his way through it all. 

"What are you doing here, kid? Where are your parents?"

"Dead," he’d told her with a shrug as Jones came sliding down the aisle. "Do you want some chocolate? I have chocolate."

Killian hadn’t needed more than that to send the puppy eyes her way, and somehow, instead of spending the apocalypse on her own, far away from people and drama and _relationships_ , she’d ended up with a man of above average attractiveness who spent most of his time making moon eyes at her, and a kid with a chip on his shoulder who reminded her so much of herself it sometimes hurt to look at him.

———

"Don’t be mad," Henry says, the door open just a crack, and Emma glares sternly at him. 

"What did you do?"

"They wouldn’t have survived the night," he says, like he’s talking about kittens abandoned by their mother, all sad eyes and beguiling smile, as he swings the door open to reveal a couple huddled under blankets on one of the cots. Warehouses, they’ve found, are almost always a good bet for hideouts - people are wary of the big open spaces and avoid them like the plague, and Emma is grateful for that. 

She is less grateful to be wandering the countryside with two bleeding hearts for companions. 

David and Mary Margaret are from Maine, and when she asks them why they’re so far away from home they look a little misty eyed. “We were on our honeymoon.”

"Tough luck," she says, ignoring the way they look at each other and they way their fingers intertwine. 

"We’re together," Mary Margaret says, and David leans over to press a soft kiss into her forehead. "That’s all that matters."

———

They head west for the winter, hoping the cold at least slows down the creatures, and they make it as far as Kansas before the first snow hits. Henry finds an abandoned farmhouse, and they spend the first three weeks hunting and preparing to wait out the winter.

The farmhouse turns out to be less abandoned than previously hoped.

August Booth rides in on a motorcycle sometime in late September, and instead of kicking them all out on their asses he opens a thirty year old bottle of scotch and invites them to tell him their stories. (He’s a writer, you see, plans to chronicle the apocalypse for the survivors, memoirs of a dark and awful time. Emma thinks he’s full of shit. Henry drinks a finger of whiskey and somehow manages to avoid telling them a single truth about his family while he babbles on about what Emma thinks is the plot to a video game for a solid hour.)

It’s weird, though. They spend the winter not venturing much farther than the edge of the farm, huddling into the living room on the colder nights, rarely daring to build a fire past twilight (People, they’ve learned, are the real monsters, the ones you tell stories about late at night to keep small children from acting out. The creatures are just pests.)

Somehow, most nights, she ends up with Henry curled against her front and Killian just a hairs-breadth from her back, never quite touching but always _present_ , his body heat seeping into her skin despite the lack of touch.

She doesn’t _yearn_ for it, but it’s a near thing.

———

Spring comes, and with it a number of unwelcome people come out of the woodworks - August tips his hat in goodbye and streaks off on the motorcycle, and their little band starts west again. 

They find old sheds and dilapidated houses and even, on one memorable occasion, an old mattress store on the third floor of a strip mall that they manage to keep a secret for three weeks.

Henry discovers his independent teenage streak, and Killian, no longer able to use “body heat” as an excuse to be close to her, retreats into their old sleeping pattern. 

She hears Mary Margaret and David whispering to each other in the dead of night while she’s on watch, hears them sigh and laugh and speak in low, soft voices and she _does not_ envy them, does not envy the inevitable pain they will feel when one of them is gone and the other is left behind.

She does _not_ envy them.

———  
They’re huddled into an old treehouse, fifty miles outside of what used to be Denver, rationing out the berries Mary Margaret has gathered, when they hear it - static, like a radio switching stations, and the murmur of voices. Many voices.

They all go silent. They’ve learned by now to be wary of groups - the bigger they are, the more likely they are to be dangerous, and they all eye each other warily as the group passes by below them - there are at least fifteen men, all of them armed to the teeth, and the crackle they’d heard earlier is indeed a radio. 

Emma spends two days debating with herself, but finally sneaks off in the dead of night, with Henry mumbling behind her and Killian’s eyes drifting closed. 

These men, with their crazy weapons and their _working_ radio, they’ve got to have some clue what’s going on, what the world has become. 

She catches a trail, following after it for a few hours, the moonlight sifting through the trees above her, and she sighs when she realizes she’s being followed.

"Killian, I swear to -."

Light shines on her face, and suddenly she’s surrounded by men, flashlights pointing straight into her face, the glare from them blinding her as a radio crackles to life to her right.

"We’ve got her. She’s alone, sir, but I’m sure we can -."

"No. I just want her." The voice is feminine, crisp and to the point, and Emma can imagine pursed lips and sensible pant suits.

She doesn’t fight them when they slide her guns from their holsters, or when they find the blades tucked into her boots. 

She wonders how long her group will last out there without her.

———

She spends three weeks in a cell with her only company the sound of the disembodied voice of the woman from before, eating army rations slipped under her door and staring at the ceiling, wondering where the hell she is and why they haven’t killed her yet.

Then one night her stupid, suicidal band of idiot heroes tries to break her out. They get as far as her cell before the lot of them are discovered, and she absolutely does not cry when Mary Margaret hugs the breath out of her in the moment before they’ve all got sniper rifles trained on them.

They’re all huddled off down the dark corridor, with men in hoods surrounding them, and shoved together into a room that looks like it came straight out of a catalogue, all black and white decorations save for the basket of blood red apples sitting on the desk. “Well, the aesthetic is a bit austere, isn’t it?” Killian grunts when Emma kicks him.

They hear the click of heels before anything else, and all turn as one to watch the office door swing open.

The woman who enters is, much to Emma’s amusement, in the very type of power pantsuit she might have expected, raven hair cropped around her jawline and looking like she’s never seen a day of the apocalypse. Her eyes scan the group with the sort of military precision Emma would expect.

"Mom?!"

Things fall apart from there. The woman looks like she’s been sucker punched, and Henry, heedless of the two very armed men in the corner, jumps from his seat, making a beeline straight toward her. 

There are lots of tears, and a number of apologies as the woman sobs into Henry’s messy brown hair, and eventually they are informed that they are in a military facility buried deep into the mountain, one run by Regina and the group she calls her Merry Men. 

One of the soldiers grunts and rolls his eyes off in the corner, but Regina ignores him as she tries to explain her wariness of taking in new people, how she’d been hoping Emma would just explain who she was and where her people were hiding so she could vet them, but of course Emma had been too stubborn for that.

Instead of letting herself fall into the trap of squabbling with the woman who might actually be able to keep this ragtag family of hers alive, she sits quietly and listens while Regina explains all that has happened since that first bomb.

It’s not pretty, and her hand, of it’s own accord, seeks out Mary Margaret’s when Regina tells them the entire eastern seaboard has been wiped clean off the map.

———

Emma spends about an hour standing under the fall of warm water in the showers before she bundles herself up in a fluffy robe, following the sound of happy laughter floating down the hallway.

She curls herself against the doorway and watches. Henry is bright and bubbly, gesturing wildly to the man she recognizes as the soldier who’d scoffed in Regina’s office earlier, and Mary Margaret and David are bundled up in their own robes, laughing along with Henry’s tales. They’ve all got glasses of wine in their hand, even Henry (she can see Regina eyeing the glass with distaste, but she doesn’t say a word, and Emma wonders at it - how had she ended up here, without her son?)

She feels Killian before she sees him, her body so attuned to him now the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end before he’s even made it down the hallway. He presses against the doorjamb opposite her, holding out a bottle of wine in her direction as he watches her. 

She takes a gulp straight from the bottle, ignores the way he stares at her appreciatively, and waits until he’s slipped into the room himself to study him - he’s in sweats and a tight teeshirt, and she can see the pull of new muscle, the hard fought scars along one cheek and falling below the vee of the shirt towards his chest, one long, jagged one on his arm she’d had to sew up with fishing wire while she yelled at him not to bleed out on her.

She swallows heavily as she watches them all, feeling more alone than she can ever remember, wondering how on earth she’d allowed herself to fall for this little group - wondering how she’ll manage to let Henry go. 

Regina darts a grateful glance in her direction as she slides onto the floor in front of Killian, snagging the bottle from his hands as Henry gestures wildly beside her.

———

Their quiet, peaceful little bubble doesn’t last. As it turns out, the so called Merry Men had been mercenaries, but as things had fallen apart they’d been recruited by Regina. Three months before, they’d gone off with a large group of soldiers on orders from whatever was left of the government, to fend off a horde that had gotten too large.

The Merry Men were all that had come back, and even then, they’d lost about half of their numbers. Regina had gone dark. They were technically fugitives of the law, now, but it wasn’t like the government didn’t have more pressing problems to deal with. 

Unfortunately, that also meant that twenty Merry Men were all that stood between them and whatever was left outside. No back up would be coming for them.

"I want to help," Emma tells Robin, and the man sighs. 

"I appreciate the offer, but I don’t know what help you think you’ll be. My men have this."

"I will go crazy stuck down here. I need to be out there. I need something to do."

He rolls his eyes as he leads her down a staircase, and she tries not to think about why she’s so dead set on going back out, why she wants to be away from all of this. (There’s nothing left for her - no one to protect anymore, no one to care for. She’s alone again, and she doesn’t even remember what that’s like. She’d forgotten the aching crush of loneliness in the last year, and now, having it back… well.)

———

Henry is livid as she gears up with the rest of the men, and David bites his tongue instead of saying whatever it is that’s on his mind. Killian is conveniently missing - they’d yelled at each other for a good forty five minutes the night before, so she’s glad she doesn’t have to se his disapproval this time.

"You can’t do this. This is stupid. You’re safe, here! You’ve fought long enough!"

"It’s never enough, kid," she tells him, and when she tries to ruffle his hair he stalks off angrily.

David squeezes her shoulder with a soft smile. “Just…be careful,” he says, and she mockingly salutes. 

"Sure thing, _dad_.”

———

Four months. Four months they trek through forests, fighting off hordes and, more often than not, gangs of less than savory men they can’t let go on roaming.

She spends most nights listening to the men tell stories, Robin laughing quietly over his ‘office romance’ while the Merry Men jest - they tell tales of their fallen comrades, of their lost families, of the lives they’d led before, and Emma falls asleep most nights with the uncomfortable knowledge that her life before the end? It was nothing compared to the family she’d found after it.

They lose contact with Regina a week later, the line going dead, and it takes the span of a moment for all of them to turn back, unheeding of their mission any longer.

The troops camped out below the mountain have obviously suffered heavy losses, but they outnumber the Merry Men three to one all the same, and Emma can’t help but think the worst. Whatever safe guards Regina had to keep the facility safe, they can’t have withstood the full force of a military raid. 

They’re most likely dead. Gone, just like everyone always ends up around her.

She tells Robin as much while he strategizes, and he hauls her up by her collar, staring at her with fire in his eyes.

"Listen to me closely. You’re not the only one who’s suffered loss. You’re not the only one who’s seen pain. We’ve all been there. So either you can buck up and help us save our friends, or you can stroll right up to that patrol and turn yourself over to the firing squad. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For everything to just be over?"

"You have no idea-."

"No idea that you mistakenly think you’ve lost Henry - a boy you’ve come to care for as your own? No idea that Mary Margaret and David are the first family you’ve ever let yourself have? No idea that you’ve never told Jones how you feel for him, despite his utter devotion to you? Your silence speaks leaps and bounds, Swan, and if you think your family is dead you might as well just give up now. If not, you can shut up and help me figure out a way into the mountain."

Emma grinds her teeth together and glares hard until Robin unfurls his fingers from her collar.

"Fine. What’s the plan?"

———

As it turns out, they don’t actually need a plan. The next morning they’re woken to the sound of gunfire and shouting, and as they scout out the company below all they see is chaos. Half the camp is up in flames, the other half are fighting off a small army of creatures, and as they watch, the artillery explodes below them.

They make a break for it, twenty five of them slinking along the treeline towards the base door, and they go unnoticed nearly all the way there.

Nearly.

The bullet catches her in the gut, and she wrenches forward, tumbling over her own feet as two, three men fall around her.

There is buzzing in her ears as she stares at the blue sky above her, the glare of the sun cutting through the leaves of an aspen tree, and she blinks blearily at the fuzzy face hovering above her.

Her last thought before the world goes black is that Robin had been right about her. 

She was a coward.

———

Her eyes scream as she blinks them open, blinding white light buzzing above her. Her lungs are on fire, and she can’t seem to move - it feels like a boulder has her pinned down.

She blinks again, her eyes finally adjusting to the light, an rolls her eyes at the sight before her. 

Henry is curled next to her, fast asleep with his arm draped across her middle, and at her feet, on either side, David and Mary Margaret have their heads pillowed in their arms, both sleeping as well.

Her right hand is clutched in a vice grip, and as she turns her head to stare at the final occupant of the room he stirs in his chair, mumbling to himself as his fingers clench around hers.

He blinks open bright blue eyes, his breath stuttering short as he catches sight of her.

"Hello, love."

She groans at the endearment, but he smiles, well aware of the number of times she’s demanded not to be called that. 

"Hey," she says softly, and squeezes at the fingers tucked against her palm. 

A moment later Henry is wide awake and yelling at her, something about her stupid martyr syndrome and a bunch of accusatory statements about trying to leave them all to waste away without her, and she doesn’t even bother to fight it. 

Instead she smiles, and lets Mary Margaret fawn over her, and grins at Henry and David as they continue to berate her.

She never lets go of Killian’s hand.

———

This is how it ends.

They keep fighting. By the next winter most of the creatures have been taken care of, and with the help of their new recruits, men and women they’ve found wandering without real direction for the last few months, they spend the winter digging pits and killing monsters trapped in ice and snow.

Henry, to the delight of Robin and the eternal chagrin of Emma and Regina, takes to the bow like the thing is noting more than an extension of his arm, and David and Mary Margaret create a council and start to plan rebuilding. 

Regina and Robin somehow end up as the heads of the new Colorado Republic, with the katana wielding Killian building their communications system from scratch. The message they send out over the radio that summer brings people flocking to the mountains, and Emma finally finds a true calling - half of the survivors are young boys and girls who’ve lost their whole family, and when Henry dubs them “The Lost Boys” the name sticks.

This is how it ends.

———

This is how it begins. As they crest the top of the mountain, Killian lights the cigarette that has been hanging out of his mouth for the last hour, and Emma rolls her eyes as he hums to himself. The sun is sipping low over the horizon, clouds rolling above the treeline in pinks and golds and purples, and Killian throws an arm over her shoulder as they curl up together. The grin that stretches across his face as he nudges her shoulder forces her to shoot him a wary look.

"I suppose you haven’t heard about the new book circulating the Republic?" he asks, and she hopes her look manages to pull off nonplussed. He chuckles. 

"Why?"

"Oh, it’s just, I seem to remember you constantly reminding me of two very important things, the last few years, and I think you’ll find Mr. August Booth was told neither of those things before he published."

He reaches into his bag on a grin, tossing her an expensive looking leather bound journal.

"Booth sent me a handwritten advance copy. I elected to keep it to myself until it was too late to stop it." He’s grinning from ear to ear, and Emma takes a deep, calming breath as she unravels the leather strap and opens it to the first page. There is a very nice inscription along the inside cover, and as her eyes flip to the title page she’s almost positive she growls.

Killian’s laugh echoes across the valley as she smacks at his arm, and he drags her with him into the grass, flipping her beneath him and nudging her into a less than innocent kiss.

She forgets all about the book for a while.

It’s only once they both break for air, some time later, that he presses a kiss to her nose, looming over her with a soft smile. “Love in the Time of Zombies,” he stutters out on a laugh, and despite herself, she dissolves into a similar fit of giggles a moment later.


End file.
